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happening on TV.
     
    The Panthers win, 21–17. But at the team meeting the next morning, Coach doesn’t seem to have noticed that fact.
    “I couldn’t hardly sleep last night,” he says, plopping the game tape into the VCR. “Burlington’s got the worst offense in the district, and we gave ’em seventeen points.We come up against a real team, we’re going to get plowed.”
    You’re sitting there, attacked by the usual day-after-a-game soreness. Your muscles are stiff; your shoulders ache, and the backs of your thighs. Every once in a while your left ankle gets one of those twinges that feels like somebody’s tightening a screw in it.
    “Looky there how high Billings comes out,” Coach says as he points to the screen. “See how he gets brushed off? Billings, you know better than that. I know you know better. Palmer, you got to pay attention to where that marker is. We should’ve had a first down right here.”
    Inside you’re still feeling nothing, but it doesn’t seem so important now. Your body will keep doing what it’s supposed to do, at the time it’s supposed to do it. And everything will just keep moving around you, no matter what.
    “Kemp, you have too much coffee before the game? That’s twice you let that guy draw you offsides. Twice! All he had to do was twitch his nose, and there you go.”
    It’s impossible to get interested in game films.
    All there is of Curtis are his long legs stretched out on the other side of Stargill. He’s sprawled in his chair, his attention on last night’s game.
    “You guys on the offensive line have to give Cox more time,” Coach is saying. “Hernandez, you’re giving up too soon—keep driving till you hear the whistle. Nicerun there, Reid,” Coach adds, and sure enough, there’s number 83 on the screen. That’s you.
    The tape rolls on. Every once in awhile Coach pauses it, hits rewind. Your eyes stay on the screen now, on number 83. He’s physical proof that you were there last night. And it’s good to have the aches and pains pinning you into your body. Otherwise you feel you might just disappear, sink through the floor with the air closing over your head as you dropped. All the chairs would come together to fill the space where you once had been.
    “Now, what the hell was this, Rhinehart?” Freeze frame on Rhinehart of the saggy pants, caught in bewildered mid-lope, yards behind a guy he can never catch up with. “You look like you’re playing flag football at the Y! I’ve never seen so many mental errors in my life,” Coach announces. “When I was in high school, I would’ve rather died than made some of the screwups you guys pulled last night. It didn’t take a whole staff of coaches barking at us to keep us in gear. We took care of our own business.”
    “Dogpile,” Brett Stargill says under his breath. His eyes are lit up; words are one thing, but pounding is something Brett understands.
    “We kept our own heads in the game,” Coach says.
    “Dogpile,” Brett says again, a little louder.
    Coach gives him a sharp look. “You coaching this team, Stargill?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Then shut up.” Coach stands in the middle of the room, staring at nothing with furrowed brow. He sighs and rubs his forehead as if there’s too much going on in his head to even attempt to explain.
    Then he looks across the room at Stargill, who wears his feelings on his face. At Cody Billings, who talks trash on the field then holds his own in a fight. At Ryan Hernandez, who explodes with each snap of the ball. “All right,” he says, almost to himself, and then he announces loud and clear: “Come Monday morning, we’re going to have a new drill. It’s time to get serious, gentlemen.”
    Rhinehart sits with his eyes straight ahead, his pudgy cheeks splotched red and white. Curtis is sitting up straight now; Curtis who has been serious about football from the first time he put on a uniform back in third grade, in the recreational league.
    You started